Synopses & Reviews
From the author of
Comeback Love, a sweeping, panoramic tale of twentieth-century America, chronicling the decades-long love affair between a Jewish immigrant and the granddaughter of a slave.
Julian Rose is only fifteen when he leaves his family and Germany for a new life in 1920s America. Lonely at first, he eventually finds his way—first by joining up with Longy Zwillman and becoming one of the preeminent bootleggers on the East Coast, and later by amassing a fortune in real estate.
Kendall Wakefield is a free-spirited college senior who longs to become a painter. Her mother, the daughter of a slave and founder of an African-American college in South Florida, is determined to find a suitable match for her only daughter.
One evening in 1938, Mrs. Wakefield hosts a dinner that reunites Julian with his parents—who have been rescued from Hitler’s Germany by the college—and brings him together with Kendall for the first time. From that encounter begins a thirty-year affair that will take the lovers from the beaches of Miami to the jazz clubs of Greenwich Village to postwar life in Paris, where they will mingle with Sartre, Picasso, and a host of other artists and intellectuals. Through his years serving in American intelligence and as an interrogator at the Nuremberg trials, what Julian wants most is to marry and find the joy that eluded his parents. Kendall craves her freedom, and after trading her oil paints for a Leica camera, becomes a celebrated photographer, among the first American journalists to photograph the survivors of a liberated concentration camp. Yet despite distance, their competing desires, and the rapidly changing world, their longing for each other remains a constant in the ceaseless sweep of time.
Captivating and infused with historical detail, this is the epic tale of three generations, two different but intertwined families, and one unforgettable love story.
Review
Praise for COMEBACK LOVE:"Golden’s breakout debut fiction is a passionate story of love, loss and reconciliation… Grab a handful of tissues, think The Notebook and then start speculating on actors best suited to bring Gordon and Glenna to the big screen."
Review
“The sometimes subtle, sometimes dramatic emotional dancing Gordon and Glenna engage in reads as honestly and accurately as any love story between two people who come together, come apart, then reconnect decades later. The repositioning of the characters between past and present never jars and should suit those who enjoy love stories along the lines of those by Nicholas Sparks and Sarah Pekkanen.”
Review
“Glenna and Gordon's romance rises and falls with the familiar but engrossing tempo of reckless, youthful passion.”
Review
“Stirring and romantic, a sweeping novel about first loves and second chances.”
Review
"An absorbing, intelligent novel about retracing one’s steps to recover what was lost, and about coming to terms with the mistakes of the past in order to rediscover a future. Peter Golden reminds us that going back is sometimes the only way to move ahead."
Review
"Illuminating!
Wherever There is Light deftly shines light on the heartbreak of prejudice, the unbreakable ties of family and the enduring power of love. Peter Golden is uniquely qualified to write this sweeping and historically accurate novel."
Review
“What color is love? These words break our heart as Julian and Kendall spend decades attempting to reach across chasms of bigotry. Weaving histories of race and slavery in America, the Holocaust in Germany, and Paris after World War II, we hope against all odds for an ending of which we can be proud. Peter Golden has given us a gift of a book.”
Review
“A uniquely American story of two unlikely lovers on disparate paths who struggle against mid-twentieth century racial and religious intolerance. Meticulously researched and beautifully written."
Review
“Keenly detailed . . .compelling . . . Author Golden proves his stripes as a historian, detailing the lovers' brief bliss in prewar Greenwich Village, separating them for their individual battles during the war, and reuniting them in a skillfully evoked postwar Paris . . . The love story is epic and truly felt. In Kendall, Golden has created a fascinating, complex, and flawed heroine.”
Review
"Like the photographs captured by its heroine, Wherever There is Light is a soul-stirring saga of dualities: joy and sorrow, darkness and a gleam of something bright, things in reach and things just beyond the frame. This impossible, yet inevitable love story grasps your heart and doesn’t let go."
About the Author
Peter Golden is an award-winning journalist, novelist, biographer, and historian. He lives outside Albany, New York, with his wife and son. Wherever There Is Light is his second novel.